chocolate pastry tarts

Follow these thorough instructions to make a homemade version of store-bought chocolate pop tarts. These fudge chocolate pastry pies hold shape if they chill before baking (step 6) and taste best if they cool before you dig in!

Fudge Chocolate Pastry Tarts

(281 grams) all-purpose flour (spoon & leveled)

cup (21 grams) unsweetened natural or dutch-process cocoa powder, plus more as needed for rolling

Tablespoons (24 grams) granulated sugar

teaspoon salt

(2 sticks; 230 grams) unsalted butter, very cold and cubed

(120 milliliters) cold whole milk*

egg wash: 1 egg beaten with 1 Tablespoon (15 milliliters) milk

ounce (113 grams) semi-sweet chocolate bar,

(60 milliliters) whole milk*

sugar

Tablespoon (15 grams) unsalted butter,

vanilla extract

Tablespoon (15 grams) unsalted butter

Tablespoons (30 milliliters) water

(120 grams) confectioners’ sugar

Tablespoons (10 grams) unsweetened natural or dutch-process cocoa powder

optional: sprinkles

Make the dough first

Place the flour, cocoa powder, sugar, and salt into a large 8-cup capacity or higher food processor or, if you don&#8217;t have a food processor, in a large bowl. Pulse or whisk until combined. Add butter and pulse or use a pastry cutter to manually cut in until coarse pea-sized crumbs form. See photo above for a visual. In 3 additions, pour in the milk and pulse or stir after each addition. After all the milk is added, pulse or stir more until the dough clumps up and comes together. If it&#8217;s too dry, add 1 Tablespoon (15ml) of cold milk. Try not to overwork the dough. Pour onto a work surface lightly dusted with cocoa powder or all-purpose flour. Use your hands to form dough into a ball. Divide the dough in half and flatten each into 1-inch thick discs. Wrap each disc tightly in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 2 hours and up to 5 days.

Make the fudge filling soon after you prepare the dough

The fudge filling needs to cool and thicken, so that is why I recommend making it soon after you put the pastry dough in the refrigerator. Place chocolate, milk, and sugar in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Stir frequently as chocolate melts and mixture combines. Once melted, remove from heat and stir in the butter and vanilla extract. Pour into a heatproof bowl, cover, and set aside at room temperature to cool and thicken. You want the consistency slightly thinner than peanut butter. Note: You can refrigerate the filling to thicken it, but it may become too thick and cold. If it&#8217;s too thick, reheat in the microwave for a few seconds.

Line 1 large baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone baking mat. Make sure there is enough room in your refrigerator for the baking sheet because the shaped pastry pop tarts must chill for 15 minutes before baking.

Roll out the chilled pie dough

Remove 1 of the dough discs from the refrigerator and let it sit at room temperature for 10 minutes to slightly warm up because it will be quite solid. (Keep the other in the refrigerator until step 5.) Lightly dust a work surface, rolling pin, and your hands with cocoa powder or all-purpose flour. Using a rolling pin, roll the dough into a 9&#215;12 inch rectangle. Use gentle force with your rolling pin and use your hands to help keep the edges straight. You can watch me roll out the dough in the video below if you need a visual (2:23 mark). Visible specks of butter and fat in the dough are perfectly normal and expected. Trim the edges of the rectangle to straighten if needed. Cut rectangle into 3 equal strips and cut those into thirds for a total of 9 3&#215;4 inch rectangles. Use a ruler to help make this process easier and more accurate. Arrange the dough rectangles 2 inches apart on the prepared baking sheet and chill in the refrigerator as you roll out 2nd half of dough in the next step.

Roll out the 2nd half of dough and cut into 9 3&#215;4 rectangles like you did with the 1st half of dough in step 4.

Assemble the pastry tarts: 

Remove 1st set of dough rectangles from the refrigerator. Using a pastry brush, brush edges of each of these 9 rectangles with egg wash. Spoon a heaping Tablespoon of filling into center of each. Lay the other set of pie dough rectangles on top of each and press your finger around the edges to slightly seal. Poke holes in the top pie crust with a fork or toothpick and then crimp with a fork to ensure no filling spills out (if it does, it&#8217;s not a big deal). Refrigerate the shaped pastries uncovered for at least 15 minutes and up to 3 hours. This firms up the pastry and helps set its shape. (After chilling, feel free to carefully transfer the pastries to a new lined baking sheet if you don&#8217;t want to bake them on the cold baking sheet.)

Meanwhile, preheat oven to 375°F (191°C). And look ahead to step 9&#8211; you can make the icing as the pastries bake in step 8.

Brush pastry tarts with egg wash and bake for 25-26 minutes or until edges appear set. Remove from the oven and allow pastries to cool for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely. Pastries taste best after completely cooling&#8211; they are very soft and rich when warm.

Make the icing

In a medium saucepan over low heat or in a medium heatproof bowl using the microwave, warm butter and water together until butter has melted. Whisk mixture with the remaining icing ingredients. Cool icing for 15 minutes before spooning onto pastries. You can add the icing when the pastries are still warm, but again, they taste best after completely cooling. Immediately top with sprinkles, if using. Note: The longer the icing cools, the thicker it gets. If you let it cool too long before spooning on the pastries, the surface will stiffen up&#8211; whisking will bring it back together though. You can also reheat on the stove or in the microwave to thin out if needed.

Cover and store pastries at room temperature for up to 1 day or in the refrigerator for up to 1 week.

Love how these turned out! I'm a bit math challenged so I ended up making 12 instead..haha! Everything is delicious from the flaky crust to the fudgy center!!

I was concerned that these would be too sweet and or too chocolatey and am happy to report that they are perfect! The individual ingredients (crust, filling, icing) come together in a most satisfying way. The most difficult part of the recipe was cutting 18 perfect rectangles. Will definitely be making these again.

Great recipe! Fun to make. The pastry is SO good. Flaky. rich but not too rich. Sweet but not too sweet! Very fun dessert.

While a little time consuming with all of the wait times, they were super easy overall. Next time I will let the compiled pastries refrigerate for more than 30 minutes. I lost the definition of the fork crimping.

Yum! I’m a chocolate addict so these were perfect for me! Just sweet enough and rich enough to satisfy my sweet tooth. And they weren’t hard to make either!

My family loved them. They look really sweet, but we not. It's the prefect combination.

these came out tasting great! I had some trouble rolling out the dough into a rectangle and cutting matching size smaller rectangles but that's on me for being a beginner. Either way, they were fun to make and I enjoy eating them.

Not exactly the prettiest dessert alive made - because I’m not great at rolling dough besides for a pie where the edges can be cut off, but these are VERY tasty. The dough is definitely flakier than a “real” pop tart, and overall the homemade version was less sweet than what you’re used to with the store bought version, but these are all GOOD things. It tasted like a small chocolate fudge  pie. Perfect with a glass of cold milk or a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

These turned out absolutely DELICIOUS! As she recommends, follow the recipe closely. I had a bit of trouble rolling out my dough so mine were uneven, but still so tasty! A fun challenge even for a beginner baker :)

Exactly as expected. The icing is excellent!

I'm only starting my baking journey, but these were straightforward and not difficult to make. I love how delicious my house smells too...Thanks for the great recipes!

Lots of fun making the pastry tarts.  I did make milk chocolate frosting since we aren’t dark chocolate fans and it beautifully complimented the dark chocolate centers. The crust is delicious!

A fun weekend project! Looking at the recipe I thought, “oh this is going to be too much chocolate!” Silly me for thinking such a thing. They were AMAZING! 

Crust: sooooooo flaky! A lovely balance between the chocolate and the butter. I highly recommend weighing your ingredients and slowly add the milk until you get the right consistency. 

Filling: Rich, bold, chocolate flavor. Almost like (safe-to-eat) brownie batter. Seriously addicting! 

Icing: I really enjoyed the consistency of the icing. As I spooned it on, it sort of ran all over the top of the pastry. Though it set so quickly that I think it would be easy to work with if you wanted to make have nice, straight edges. I went with the haphazard approach LOL! 

All in all, a great recipe. Takes some time and uses quite a few dishes, but a lot of fun!

delicious!! it turned out great! i was worried it would be too sweet but it was PERFECT!!

These were a million times better than store bought pop tarts! I had a bit of trouble getting the  dough cut into even pieces so there are many different sizes . But besides that they weren’t to hard to make although it was harder than some other recipes I’ve made. Anyway thanks for the recipe Sally!

These are not only impressive looking, they are also impressive tasting!  Perfect balance between the crust that's not too sweet and the rich fudgy filling and frosting.  They are a little time consuming but since I had weekend guests staying with me, it was the perfect time to make a fun and decadent treat.   We all agreed they are definitely worth the effort. Thanks for another fun baking challenge!

Amazing! This was a really fun baking project and I'm so happy with how they came out.

I enjoyed making this recipe! My food processor is only 5 cup capacity so I made the dough in two batches. Next time I’ll use my pastry cutter as my butter got a little too incorporated and the dough a bit overworked. 

I weighed the mass of dough and ensured two equal discs. When I rolled them out the first time I had some pieces significantly larger than others so I got a bit creative and weighed out 9 equal balls of dough to roll out from each disc to ensure even pastries. 

They came together really nicely in the oven! I added a bit of instant coffee powder to the icing for a little kick of something different and it turned out delicious! Thank you Sally for this fun challenge!

These were absolutely delicious! I assembled them on Saturday and baked them up Sunday morning. The only thing I added was a pinch of salt to the icing and filling because I love the salty-sweet combo. I was concerned they'd be a bit too rich but they're perfect, I'd definitely make these again.

Love these! Making them was quite easy and fun, and the result is realllly good! Everyone said the dough was very flaky, the filling very rich, the glazing really good, all in all a pretty addictive treat!

Delicious and not overly sweet. 
The recipe notes are amazing and easy to follow. Everything felt like it came together so well. From the flaky chocolate crust to the chocolate fudge centre and the chocolate icing on top. Perfection!

This was such a fun challenge with delicious results! I had never made pie dough before, but I found the food processor method to be very easy! The chilling times were perfect, and the dough and filling were easy to work with. My pop tarts  were done after only 22 minutes in the oven. The icing set up really nicely, and the fudge filling was the best part!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmHys9Lukxg

This video shows the process of making fudge chocolate pastry tarts, a homemade variation of store-bought chocolate pop tarts with chocolate pie dough, fudge filling, and cocoa icing.

Get the full recipe: https://sallysbakingaddiction.com/chocolate-pastry-pop-tarts/

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Chocolate Pastry Tarts | Sally's Baking Addiction

I liked creating these tarts. I loved the filling and the icing more than the pastry itself. I did find the pastry flaky and appreciated the instructions. Not something I would have made, so love having the challenge to encourage something new.

I loved this recipe so much! The recipe was easy to follow and the poptarts weren’t too chocolatey! Highly recommend!

Very good recipe, but a lot of work! It was fun to make but not something I would make very often. The icing on top is really delicious.

This was an awesome recipe! My kids helped make them and we all loved them. The pastry is so light and flaky. And the filling and icing are perfect! Made this as part of the baking challenge and I am so glad to try something new!

I made these for the February baking challenge. 
I used fresh ground whole spelt flour and it worked great! They were delicious even after waiting three days to eat them. Will definitely make them again.

So much easier than I thought! I used milk chocolate, and now I'm interested in trying different flavors, especially with fillings. Sally never fails to provide fool proof instructions!

This wasn't as flaky as I might have expected, and they were a little buttery. I'm not sure why, if I should have food processed it more, I'm not sure. But it was delicious anyway. I used some leftover buttercream frosting from the Oreo buttercream brownies, and heated it up instead of the icing, but they went well together.

This recipe was AMAZING!!! I made this recipe yesterday for the February Baking Challenge, and my whole family LOVED them!!!! I didn't even have to store them, because they didn't last that long! My family gobbled them up within a few hours! My little brother (who doesn't even like chocolate!) had TWO!  I'm happy to announce that I'll be making another batch tomorrow! Thank you Sally for posting these amazing recipes!

Hi Sally! Thank you so much for your reply. I used Nestle Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips. Yes, I will definitely try this recipe again, and when I do I'll be sure to reduce the milk. Thank you!

These were so delicious! It was quite a bit of effort to make, but worth it for a special occasion. I used half vanilla and half almond extract, and a pinch of salt in each chocolate step, and it added a nice depth of flavor.

Hi Sally,

The flavor of these was spot-on, but I had trouble with the edges. Mine came out of the oven with like an inch of flaky layers on the edge instead of a nice flat edge like yours. I did crimp them with a fork, but it seems the edges still wanted to puff up. Thankfully not too much filling leaked out, so they at least sealed. Anyway, if you have any suggestions, I'd love to hear. Thanks so much!

This was soooo good to make. I loved having it warmed up in the microwave some with a glass of milk!!

Another excellent recipe! The dough was flaky and the fudge filling was delicious. This is a time consuming recipe.  And the chocolate dough is tricky to work with.  But the results are amazing! Instead of chocolate icing I made strawberry icing.  I took some freeze dried strawberries and blended them into a powder.  Then I used that in place of the cocoa powder.  Incredible!

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Fudge Chocolate Pastry Tarts

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